Mercury CEO Immad Akhund Emphasizes Sales as a Core Skill for Engineering Founders

Immad Akhund, CEO and co-founder of Mercury, a prominent digital banking platform for startups, recently shared crucial advice for engineering founders, highlighting the often-overlooked importance of sales. Akhund, a seasoned entrepreneur and prolific angel investor, stressed that sales is a learned skill that technical founders must prioritize for business success. In a recent social media post, Akhund stated, "> Sales is a learned skill. But as an engineer it’s easy to want to procrastinate or avoid it. Make it your primary job for a few years and you will get good at it." This insight underscores a common challenge for technically-minded founders who may prefer product development over customer acquisition. His own journey, having founded multiple companies before Mercury, lends significant weight to this perspective. Akhund's career demonstrates a deep understanding of the startup ecosystem, having navigated various product iterations and market challenges. As the head of Mercury, a company that has significantly impacted the fintech landscape for startups, he has firsthand experience in building and scaling a business that requires strong customer engagement and growth strategies. His advice suggests that mastering sales is not merely about closing deals, but about deeply understanding market needs and driving product adoption. The emphasis on sales as a primary job for engineers aligns with broader entrepreneurial wisdom that strong product-market fit often comes from direct customer interaction. Akhund's past reflections have frequently touched upon the necessity of understanding what customers truly want, a process inherently linked to effective sales and communication. This perspective encourages technical founders to step beyond their comfort zones and actively engage in the commercial aspects of their ventures. Akhund, who is also a former part-time partner at Y Combinator and an investor in over 300 startups, consistently champions founders who target massive markets with humanity-centric innovations. His counsel to engineering founders to embrace sales as a core competency is a call to action for building more robust and market-aligned companies, ensuring that innovative products find their audience and achieve sustainable growth.